Before I Let You Go by Kellie Wallace
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 Stars

Before I Let You Go by Kellie Wallace is the first book that I have read by this author, so I had no reference as to what her storytelling was like- but the cover grabbed my attention, and the blurb fired my curiosity to find out what happened. So I happily one-clicked myself a copy to explore.
I loved the premise of the story, right from the get-go I was intrigued by the whole earth-bound spirit, remote island murder mystery aspect and I was excited to see how the story played out.
What I discovered is a contemporary paranormal romantic mystery with drama, danger, suspense, intrigue, and uncovering secrets. While, for the most part, I enjoyed the story- there were aspects that pulled me out of the storyline and had me questioning things.
For me, there was a lot of contradictory/conflicting information/details. As well as getting whiplash from the characters sudden changes of opinion after having given very strong opinions to the contrary only paragraphs earlier, with no reasons for their change of heart. It felt like a lot of manufactured drama and that left a ‘bad taste’ in my mouth. It also made it difficult to connect with the characters or feel like I was fully invested in them and the outcome of the story.
The story was slow to get going, it was at least a quarter of the way into the book before the ‘story’ really started. So that was frustrating. A lot of what happened in that first quarter of the book could, in my opinion, have been condensed into a couple of chapters, or been told in a prologue. It just ‘dragged’ the beginning of the story out way too far and took away from the intrigue of the ‘actual’ story.
The transitions from scene to scene were somewhat abrupt and confusing too. With only a sentence space between one scene and the next, which didn’t allow enough space to ‘end’ what had been happening, before continuing, which made one scene flow into another, causing confusion. That had me rereading parts to figure out what was going on before realising that there were different ‘scenes’ playing out. A bigger space, symbol, motif, swirl, or other visual clue would have allowed a smoother scene break and given the story a better flow, while saving any kind of confusion.
Again, though, I did overall enjoy the story- I just feel like the author missed the opportunity to take her book to a whole other level and really stand out from ‘the rest’.
But, I see that the author has a lot of other books to her name, which makes me curious to see what else she can do, so I will be going back later to explore more of her books and find out.
Happy reading…

Thank you, Kellie Wallace!

Reviewed by @angelahayes

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